a Cornell University Library Ithaca, New York 52.W33 “imi ni JUSTIN, CORNELIUS NEPOS, AND EUTROPIUS, ‘ LITERALLY TRANSLATED, WITH NOTES AND A GENERAL INDEX. BY THB t REV. JOHN SELBY WATSON, M.A., HEAD MASTER OF THE PROPRIETARY GRAMMAR SCHOOL, STOCKWELL. CY | HEN ar ry LONDON: : HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. ' 1853. D PREFACE. Tuis volume contains Versions of Justin, Cornelius Nepos, and Eutropius. Justin has been translated from the text of Wetzel; Cornelius Nepos from that of Bos, as re-edited by Fischer ; and Eutropius from that of Tszchucke. Each of the authors has been rendered in a style as easy as was consistent with a faithful adherence to the sense. Notes on points of history, and on peculiarities in the text, have been given wherever they seemed to be required. Remarks on the authors are prefixed, and a copious Index added. NOTICE OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS or JUSTIN. As Justin is not properly an author, but an abridger, we shall first give our attention to the writer whom he abridged. All that is certainly known’ of the personal history of Trogus Pompeius is, that he was a Roman by birth ;* that his ancestors were of the Vocontii, a people of Italy; that his grandfather, Trogus Pompeius, was presented with the right of citizenship by Pompey during the war with Sertorius; that his uncle was an officer of cavalry under Pompey, in the war with Mithridates; and that his father served in the army under Julius Cesar, and was afterwards his private secretary.t Trogus himself must, therefore, have flourished under Au- gustus. The last event that he appears to have recorded is the restordtion of the Roman standards by the Parthians. He wrote a history in forty-four books, which he entitled Historia Philippice, because, as is supposed, his chief design in writing it was to relate the origin, progress, decline, and extinction of the Macedonian monarchy, and especially the achievements of Philip and his son. But he allowed himself, like Herodotus and other historians, to indulge in such large digressions and excursions, that it was regarded by many as a Universal History, and is represented, in some manuscripts, * Just. xiii. 1. f Just. xliii. fin. b2 6 NOTICE OF as containing totius mundi origines et terre situs, a character to which it had no right. The first six books comprised the period antecedent to . Philip, in which an account was given of the Assyrians, Per- sians, Egyptians, Scythians, Athenians, and Lacedemonians ; the history of Macedonia was commenced in the seventh book, and continued, in combination with other matters, to the over- throw of Andriscus, the Pseudo-Philippus, in the thirty-third. The prologi, or arguments, which we have of all the books, similar to the epitomes of the lost books of Livy, were first published by Bongarsius. He seems to have taken his materials from the Greek his- torians.* His title appears to have been suggested by the Philippica of Theopompus, a voluminous work, of which Ste- phanus de Urbibust cites the fifty-seventh book. Whatever speeches he inserted were in the oblique form, for he blamed Livy and Sallust for giving long direct speeches in their histories.{ He is praised by Justin for his eloquence ; ‘vir prisce eloquentia ;§ and Vopiscus|| ranks his style with those of Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus. A treatise of Trogus, de Animalibus, is mentioned by Chari- sius,§ and Trogus is quoted as an authority by Pliny in several passages of his Natural History; and this Trogus is generally supposed to be the same as Trogus the historian. A writer named Trogus is also twice cited by Priscian, in his fifth and sixth books, but whether he is the Trogus of Justin, is uncertain. * See Heeren de Trog. Pomp. Fontibus et Auctoritate, a to Frotscher's edition. ¢ In Meooaria. $ Just. xxviii. 3.° § Just. Pref. || Life of Probus, I. p. 79. JUSTIN. Y The epitome that Justin made of the large work of Trogus, has often been supposed the cause that the original was lost. Who or what Justin was, we are left in ignorance; we know not even what name he had besides Justinus, for though one manuscript entitles him Justinus Frontinus, and another M. Junianus Justinus, the other manuscripts give him only one name. From the words Imperator Antonine, which occur in the preface in the editions of Aldus and others, he has been often said}to have lived in the reign of that emperor; but those words are now generally thought to have been interpolated by some, who, like Isidore aud Jornandes, confounded him with Justin Martyr.* From an expression in the eighth book, where Greece is said to be etiam nunc et viribus et dignitate orbis terrarum princeps, it has been conjectured that he flourished under the Eastern;emperors ; but such conjecture is groundless, for the words merely refer to the period of which the author is writing, and may be, indeed, not Justin’s, but Trogus’s. His style, however, in which occur the words adunare, im- possibilis, presumtio, opinio for “ report,” and other words and phrases of inferior Latinity, show that he must have lived some considerable time after the Augustan age. Such phrase- ology could not have been found in the pages of Trogus. But Justin could not have been later than the beginning of the fifth century, as he is mentioned by St. Jerome.t That he was not a Christian, is proved, as Vossius remarks, by the ignorance which he manifests of the Jewish Scrip- tures;{ for he could not, assuredly, have copied Trogus’s vagaries without bestowing some correction upon them. He has been censured for not making a more regular abridgment * See the note on that passage of the Preface. + Procem. in Daniel. t Just. xxxvi. 1, 2. 8 NOTICE OF JUSTIN. ‘of his author’s work, but without justice ; for he intended only to extract or abbreviate such portions as he thought more likely than others to please the general reader. His composition is animated, and in general correct, but not of the highest order of merit. His peculiarities of phrase- ology are carefully specified by Wetzel in his prolegomena, though he has omitted to remark his constant use of the con- junction quasi in his narratives and descriptions. It is observed by Dr. Robertson,* that “we cannot rely on Justin’s evidence, unless when it is confirmed by the tes. timony of other ancient authors.” The remark ought rather to be transferred to Trogus, whom Justin seems faithfully to have followed, and who seems, indeed, to have been a writer of sufficient credulity, as his account of Habis, in his forty- fourth book, may serve to show. But there is no historian, as Vopiscust says, that does not tell something false, and Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, and Trogus, alike exhibit passages not proof against strict examination. The best editions of Justin are those of Bongarsius, Paris, 1581; of Grevius, Lugd. Bat., 1683, which has been several times reprinted ; of Hearne, Oxon, 1708 ;of Gronovius, Lugd. Bat. 1719, 1760; of Fischer, Lips. 1757; and of Wetzel, Lips. 1806, reprinted in Lemaire’s Bibliothéque Classique, 1823. ‘The oldest English Version is that of Arthur Goldinge, 1564, and the next that of Robert Codrington, 1654, both of whom had but an imperfect knowledge of the language of their author. There have since appeared translations by Thomas Brown, 1712; by Nicolas Bayley, 1732; by Clarke, 1732 ; and by Turnbull, 1746, the last being the most readable performance, but not always faithful to the sense. * Disquisition on Anc. India, note 12. + Life of Aurelian, prope init. NOTICE OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS oF CORNELIUS NEPOS.: CornELius Nepos is generally supposed to have been born at Hostilia,* a village in the neighbourhood of Verona, a town included in Cisalpine Gaul. Hence Ausonius,} speaking of Catullus’s { dedication of his poems to Cornelius Nepos, says that Gaul supplied the personage to whom the dedication was addressed. Pliny the elder § calls him Padi accola, Hostilia being at no great distance from the Po. He enjoyed the intirnate friendship, not only of Catullus, but of Cicero || and Atticus.{1 In Eusebius’s Chronicon he is placed in the fourth year of the reign of Augustus, which Vossius supposed to be the time when he first began to attract attention by his writings. Pliny** says that he died in the reign of Augustus. No other particulars concerning his per- sonal history have reached us. * Voss. de Hist. Lat. Prolegomena to Van Staveren’s edition by Bardili, note, p. xeviii. + Auson. 471, 9. + Catull. i. 3. § HN. iii, 22. || Cic. ad Att. xvi. 5; A. Gell. xv. 28. 7 Vit. Att. v 18. ** HN, ix. 39; x. 23, 10 NOTICE OF From various passages in ancient authors we find that he wrote the following works. 1. Chronica, to which Catullus appears to allude in his dedication to Nepos :— Ausus es unus Italorum Omne evum tribus explicare chartis, Doctis, Jupiter! et laboriosis. Ausonius also mentions the work in his sixteenth Epistle, to Probus, and Aulus Gellius in the twenty-first chapter of his seventeenth book.* The tres charte of Catullus are sup- posed to indicate that the work was in three books. 2. Exemplorum libri, of which Charisius cites the second. book, and Aulus Gelliust the fifth. It is thought to have been @ work of the same nature as the subsequent compilation of Valerius Maximus. 8. De Viris Illustribus, from which Gellius ¢ gives an anec- dote respecting Cato. But this may be merely another desig- nation of the preceding work, or of the Lives. 4. De Vité Ciceronis, of which Gellius § corrects an error in the first book, respecting the age at which Cicero pleaded his first cause, 5. Epistole ad Ciceronem. Lactantius|| gives an extract ~ from one of them. But it is not certain that they were ever published in a volume by themselves. 6. The younger Pliny, in one of his epistles, speaks of verses made by Cornelius Nepos, but itis equally uncertain whether they were a separate publication. 7. A work De Historicis, mentioned in the third chapter of the Life of Dion. 8. A larger Life of Cato, which is mentioned at the end of the existing short Life, as having been written at the request * See also Solinus, i. 7; xliv. 1. + vii. 18. t ix. 8. § xv. 28, || Instit. Div. iii, 15, CORNELIUS NEPOS. 11 of Atticus ; but this may have been included in one of the collec- tions above mentioned. In the Guelferbytanus Codex, in- deed, the shorter Life is said to be extracted E libro Cornelti Nepotis de Latinis Historicis. 9, The Eacellentium Imperatorum Vite appeared in the reign of Theodosius I. as the work of Aimilius Probus, a grammarian, who presented it to that emperor with a dedication in bad Latin verse, in which he openly claims to himself the author- ship of it. Vade liber noster, fato meliore, memento, Quum leget hec Dominus, te sciat esse meum. * * * * Si rogat auctorem, paullatim detege nostrum Tunc Domino nomen; me sciat esse Probum. He says that the work was the joint production of his mother or father (some copies have genetricis and others gentto- ris), his grandfather, and himself. The editio princeps accord- ingly, and some subsequent editions, containing the first twenty- three lives, from Miltiades to Hannibal, with the dedication to Atticus prefixed, were published in thename of Amilius Probus, and nobody seems at first to have doubted that they were produced as stated in the verses. But suspicions could not but at length arise. Who was the Atticus to whom the preface was addressed? Or why should Probus have addressed his preface to any Atticus, and not to Theodosius to whom he dedicated the book? Atticus is also mentioned in the Life of Hannibal as being dead, and having left writings; was this i the same Atticus, addressed as living in the preface, and spoken of as dead in the body of the work? At length Peter Cornerus discovered, in a manuscript containing Cicero’s Letters to Atticus, the biographies of Cato and Atticus, and added them to the other Lives, publishing them all under the name of A‘milius Probus, in defiance of 12 NOTICE OF internal evidence, as the writer of those pieces speaks of him- self as a contemporary and friend of Atticus; and in defiance also of the inscription at the head of the manuscript, which de- clared them to be E libro posteriore Cornelii Nepotis. At last Dionysius Lambinus, undertaking an edition in 1569, affixed to it a dissertation and commentary, in which he endea- voured to prove that the Lives, exhibiting matter and style greatly at variance with the, age of Theodosius, were not the production of Aimilius Probus, but wholly Nepos’s own. The authority of Lambinus was such, that none ventured to question his decision, until Barthius, observing that there were certain solecisms and other peculiarities in the Lives which forbade them to be attributed entirely to a writer of the Augustan age, suggested that they were partly the work of Nepos and partly that of Probus, Probus having probably abridged the original performances, and introduced occasionally some matter and phra- seology of hisown. This supposition will account for the strange observations in the Preface, and in the Life of Epaminondas, on the manners of the Greeks, and for many of the inaccuracies, singular constructions, and abruptnesses of transition, of which it cannot be supposed that such a writer as Cornelius Nepos would have been guilty. This opinion has now been adopted by most critics. The reader will find the question amply discussed by Rinckius, in a dissertation prefixed to the edition of Roth, Basil, 1841, enti- tled Aimilius Probus de Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium,zet Cornelii Nepotis que supersunt. The chief histo- rical inaccuracies in the lives are briefly but judiciously noticed by Mr. Barker in his edition of Lempriere. That the Life of Atticus is wholly the work of Cornelius Nepos, has been generally acknowledged. As to the Life of Cato, it may have been first abridged by Nepos himself, and afterwards again by Probus. If Nepos wrote a dedication to CORNELIUS NEPOS. 13 Atticus, as we may suppose that he did, and was also the au- thor of the Life of Hannibal, we must conclude that that Life was not contained in the first edition of the work, but was added to it after Atticus’s death. Of the biography of Atticus, part was published while Atticus was alive, and part after his decease.* From the conclusion of the Life of Hannibal, it appears that Nepos intended also to write biographies of eminent Roman commanders, that their actions might be compared with those of the Greeks. Whether this work was completed, we have no means of knowing, but from some passages of Plutarch, who cites Nepos for facts in the Lives of Lucullus and Marcellus, we may suppose that at least some part of it was written. © There are many good editions of Cornelius Nepos, but the text has perhaps never, on the whole, been presented in a better state than it is given in the edition of Bos, as re- redited by Fischer, Leipsic, 1806. Two or three English translations have preceded that which is now offered to the public, but none of them good. Clarke’s is the most faithful, but the English resembles that of the rest of his versions. Sir Matthew Hale translated the Life of Atti cus, with Moral and Political Observations, published in 1677. * Att. c. 18, NOLICE OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS oF EUTROPIUS. a. e From Eutropius* himself we learn that he served under Julian, and attended him in his expedition to the east. From Georgius Codinus, de Originibus Constantinopolitanis,+ we find that he had previously been secretary, émorodoyedoos, to Constantine the Great. He was alive in the age of Valen- tinian and Valens; to the latter of whom he dedicates his book. This is all that is known of his personal history. When or where he was born, it is useless "to attempt to dis- cover. Suidas calls him “IrwAts cogsorjs, which we may translate, an Italian eminent writer ; but Suidas, as Fabricius and others have observed, may merely have called him so because he wrote in Latin. The authors of the Histoire Littéraire de la- France} wished to prove, from Symmachus, that he was the countryman of Ausonius, and born near Bourdeaux; and Vinetus, from his name and other suppo- sitions, would make him a Greek; but none of the arguments in favour of either hypothesis deserve the least regard. Like Justin, he has but one name; for though he is called Flavius * Lib.x.c.16. + Ed. Par. fol. p. 9; Test. Vet. apud Verheyk, + Tom. i. p. 220; Tzschucke, Prolegom. in Eutrop. p. iii, v. NOTICE OF EUTROPIUS. 15 Eutropius by Sigonius and Boniface, the Flavius rests on no sufficient authority.* Some, as Vossius observes, have sought to demonstrate from Gennadiust that he was-a disciple of Augustin.” But Augustin did not flourish till the end of the fourth and begin- ning of the fifth century, at which period Eutropius must either have been dead or extremely old. Others have en- deavoured to make him a Christian from what is said of Julian, nimius insectator religionis Christiane,{ but the word - nimius is wanting in the best manuscripts, and, if it were found in all, would be of little weight. It seems, indeed, tolerably evident, that Eutropius must have been, not a Christian, but a heathen. “He takes no notice,” says Vossius, ‘“ of the ten persecutions, and in his notice of Jovian § Plaiuly advocates dishonest dealings.” But direct evidence of his heathenism is given by Nicephorus Gregoras,|| one of the Byzantine historians, in an oration on the character of Con- stantine the Great, in which it is observed, that what Eutropius says in favour of Constantine is peculiarly deserving of atten- tion, as proceeding from a writer who must have had some feeling against him ‘in consequence of being of a different religion, di re rd ris Oonoxsius dnowdvyroy, and also of being a contemporary and partizan of Julian, di vd qAsmieirny xal aigsorirny “TovAscvou yévecbas. Nicephorus also calls him a Greek or Gentile, "EAAqv ual dAAoDUAOY bonaxeiag Tedpiuos, and speaks in such a way as to leave no doubt that the historian Kutropius is meant. According to Suidas, he wrote other things besides his epitome, but what they were is unknown. A Eutropius is cited by Priscian as an authority for the sound of the letter a, * Tzschucke, p. viii. + De Ilustribus Ecclesice Scriptoribus. + Eutrop. x. 16. § Eutrop. x. 17. || Test. Vet. apud Verheyk. 16 NOTICE OF EUTROPIUS. but no intimation is given that he was the ‘compiler of the history. Whether he executed the work in a loftier style, which he promises at the end of his epitome, is uncertain. . As a historian, he is guilty of some errors as to facts and chronology, which are minutely particularized by Tzschucke,* but is faithful on the whole, except that he omits, or colours too favourably, some of the transactions that are dishonour- able to Rome. His style is correct and sufficiently polished, but exhibits some words, as medietas, dubietas, and some expressions, that are of the lower age of the Latin language. But when we consider how late he lived, we may rather commend him for having so few of such peculiarities, than blame him for those that occur. His text was in a very corrupt state, until Ignatius, in 1516, and Schonhovius, in 1546, exerted themselves to clear it_from the foreign matter that had been attached to it by Paulus Diaconus and others. The best editions now are those of - Havercamp, 1729; Verheyk, 1762, 1793; and Tzschucke, 1796, 1804. Grosse also has since published a useful edition. Eutropius was twice translated into Greek, by Capito Lycius,t whose version is lost, and by Pseanius, whose per- formance survives in a nearly complete state, and is printed in the editions of Cellarius and Verheyk. Who Peanius was, we do not know; Sylburgius first gave the translation to the press in 1590. It sometimes deviates from the sense, but is in general faithful. Eutropius has been translated into English by Nicolas Hayward, 1564; by Clarke, 1722, a version that has been several times reprinted, and by Thomas, 1'760. None of these performances deserve any particular notice. * P. xxvi. seqg. t Suidas v. Karirwy, JUSTIN’S HISTORY OF THE WORLD, EXTRACTED FROM TROGUS POMPEIUS. PREFACE. ArtER many Romans,* men even of consular dignity, had * committed the acts of their countrymen to writing in Greek, a foreign language,t Trogus Pompeius, a man of eloquence equal to that of the ancients,t whether prompted by a. desire to emulate their glory, or charmed by the variety and novelty of the undertaking, composed the history of Greece, and of the whole world, in the Latin tongue, in order that, as our actions might he read in Greek, so those of the Greeks might be read in our language; attempting a work that demanded extraordinary resolution and labour. For when, to most authors who write the history only of particular princes or nations, their task appears an affair of arduous effort, must not Trogus Pompeius, in attempting the whole world, seem to have acted with a boldness like that of Hercules, since in his books are contained the actions of all ages, monarchs, nations, and people? All that the historians of Greece had under- taken separately, according to what was suitable to ‘each, Trogus Pompeius, omitting only what was useless, has put * Among these were Aulus Albinus, consul a.v.c. 602, Cic. Brut. c. 21; Aul. Gell. xi. 8; Lucius Cincius, mentioned by Dionys, Halicarn. i. 6; Caius Julius a senator, Liv. Epit. liii.; Lucius Lucullus, consul a.0.0, 679, Cic. Acad. ii, 1; and Cicero, who sent an account of his consulship (a.v.c. 690) written in Greek to his friend Atticus; Ep. ad Att, i 19.— Wetzel. + Greco peregrinoque sermone.] Greek, and therefore foreign, not Latin.— Wetzel. t+ Vir prisce edoquentie.] More literally, “A man of ancient elo- quence.” B 2 JUSTIN’S PREFACE. together in one narration, everything being assigned to its proper period, and arranged in the regular order of events. From these forty-four volumes therefore (for such was the num- ber that he published), I have extracted, during the leisure that I enjoyed in the city, whatever was most worthy of being known; and, rejecting such parts as were neither attractive for the pleasure of reading, nor necessary by way of example, have formed, as it were, a small collection of flowers, that those who are acquainted with the history of Greece might have something to refresh their memories, and those who are strangers to it something for their instruction. This work I have sent to you, * not so much that it may add to your know- ledge, as that it may receive your correction ; and that, at the same time, the account of my leisure, of which Cato thinks that an account must be given, may stand fair with you. For your approbation is sufficient for me for the present, with the expectation of receiving from posterity, when the malice of detraction has died away, an ample testimony to my diligence. * Ad te.| In the editions before that of Bongarsius, 1581, the words Marce Antonine followed te, but as they did not ‘appear in the manu- scripts which Bongarsius consulted, he omitted them. They are generally supposed to have been inserted by some editor or editors, who confounded Justin the historian with Justin Martyr, who lived in the reign of Antoninus. At what time Justin the historian lived is uncertain. See the biographical notice prefixed. But Pontanus and Isaac Vossius argued for the words being retained; and Scheffer, observing that the oldest editions, and that of Bongarsius himself, based on at least eight manuscripts, have Quod ad te non coynoscendi magis quam emendands causa transmisi, would read, Quod ad te non tam cognoscend?, Marce Antonine Cesar, quam emendandi, dc., supposing mages to be a corruption of M. A. C., the first letters of the emperor's names, BOOK I. The monarchy of the Assyrians, Ninus, I.—Semiramis, I1.—Sardana- palus, III—The monarchy of the Medes; Astyages, IV.—The youth of Cyrus, V.—He becomes king, VI.—His victory over Croesus; Candaules and’ Gyges, VIL—Expedition of ‘Cyrus against the Scythians; his death, VIII.—Cambyses ; the Magi; Otanes, IX.—Darius, the son of Hystaspes, X. I. Orieinatty, * the government of nations and tribes was in the hands of kings ;+ whom it was not their flattery of the people, but their discretion, as commended by the prudent, that elevated to the height of this dignity. The people were not then bound by any laws; the wills of their princes were instead of laws. It was their custom to defend, rather than advance,t the boundaries of their empire. The dominions of each were confined within his own country. The first of all princes, who, from an extravagant desire of ruling, changed this old and, as it were, hereditary custom, was Ninus, king of the Assyrians. It was he who first made war upon his neighbours, and subdued the nations, as yet too barbarous to resist him, as far as the frontiers of Libya. Sesostris,§ king of Egypt, and Tanaus,|| king of Scythia, were indeed prior to him in time; the one of whom advanced into Pontus, and the other as far as Egypt; but these princes engaged in distant wars, not in struggles with their neigh- * Principio rerwm.] “In the beginning of things,” i.e. as soon as there was any government at all. + Penes reges.] See Sallust, Cat. i. 2; Cig. Leg. 2, 11, de Off. ii. 12; Arist. Polit. i. +t See Sall. Cat. 2; Tacit. Ann. iii. 26; Ov. Met.i. 89, § Justin, ii. 3, makes Sesostris fifteen hundred years older than Ninus ; but the truth is that his age and actions are equally involved in obscurity, though Usher says that he was the son of the Amenophis who perished in the Red Sea, and that, consequently, he began his reign A.M. 25138. But Reitz, on Herod. ii. 102, fixes his death in a.m. 2718, eighty-seven years before the taking of Troy. Marsham, again, in his Can. Chr. p. 22, follows Josephus (Ant. viii 4) in placing him much later, and in making him the same with Shishak, who took Jerusalem and plundered the temple, a.m. 3018, two hundred and thirteen years after Troy wastaken. Diodorus Siculus, who speaks of his actions, i, 53—58, settles nothing certain concerning his age.— Wetzel. : || Herodotus, iv. 5, calls the first king of Scythia Targitaus. B 2 4 JUSTIN. [B.I. C.IT. bours; they did not seek dominion for themselves, but glory for their people, and, content with victory, declined to govern those whom they subdued. But Ninus established the great- ness of his acquired dominion by immediately possessing himself of the conquered countries.* Overcoming, accord- ingly, the nearest people, and advancing, fortified with an accession of strength, against others, while each successive victory became the instrument of one to follow, he subjugated the nations of the whole'east. His last war was with Zoro- aster,t king of the Bactrians, who is said to have been the first that invented magic arts, and to. have investigated, with great attention, the origin of the world and the motions of the stars. After killing Zoroaster, Ninus himself: died, leaving a son called Ninyas, still a minor, and a wife, whose name was Semiramis.{ TI. Semiramis, not daring to entrust the government to a youth, or openly to take it upon herself (as so many great nations would scarcely submit to one man, much less to a woman), pretended that she was the son of Ninus instead of his wife, a male instead of a female. The stature of both mother and son was low, their voice alike weak, and the cast of their features similar. She accordingly clad her arms and legs in long garments, and decked her head with a turban ; and, that she might not appear to conceal any thing by this new dress, she ordered her subjects also to wear the same apparel ; a fashion which the whole nation has since retained. Having thus dissembled her sex at the commencement of her * Continud possessione.] His establishment of his power over the , countries was immediately consequent on his subjugation of them. + By Diodorus, ii. 6, he is called Oxyartes. See also Plin. H. N. xxx. 1; August. De Civ. Dei. xxi, 14.— Wetzel. Concerning the age of Zoroaster all is uncertainty ; such is the difference of opinions about it. Agathias and others think that he must have lived at a later date, about the commencement of the Persian empire. See Marsham in Canon. Aigypt. ad Sec, ix.—Gronovius. It has not yet been shown that Zoroaster the king and Zoroaster the Magus were the same person. + See Diodorus, xi.4; Plutarch in Amator.; lian. Var. Hist. vii. 1; Polyzen. Stratag. vii, “Conon apud Photium, Narr. ix. states, that Semiramis was not the wife but the daughter of Ninus or Ninyas, and says, eam ignaram cum filio concubuisse, and afterwards, re cognita, married him; after which occurrence it was lawful among the Persians for sons commiscert matribus.”—Vossius. To the concubitus cum eguo Pliny alludes, H. N. viii. 64. B.C. 2144—896.] SARDANAPALUS,: 5 reign, she 'was believed to be a male. She afterwards per- formed many noble actions; and when she thought envy was overcome by the greatness of them, she acknowledged who she was, and whom she had personated. Nor did this confession detract from her authority as a sovereign, but increased the admiration of her, since she, being a woman, surpassed, not only women, but men, in heroism. It was she that built Babylon,* and constructed round the city a wall of burnt brick ; bitumen, a substance which every- where oozes from the ground in those parts, being spread between the bricks instead of mortar.t Many other famous acts, too, were performed by this queen; for, not content with preserving the territories acquired by her husband, she added Kthiopia also to her empire; and she even made war upon India, into which no prince,t except her and Alexander the Great, ever penetrated. At last, conceiving a criminal passion for her son, she was killed by him, after holding the kingdom two and forty years from the death of Ninus. Her son Ninyas, content with the empire acquired by his parents, laid aside the pursuits of war, and, as if he had changed sexes with his mother, was seldom seen by men, but grew old in the company of his women. His successors too, following his example, gave answers to their people through their ministers. The Assyrians, who were afterwards called Syrians, held their empire thirteen hundred years. III. The last king that reigned over them was Sardanapa- lus, a man more effeminate thana woman. One of his satraps, named Arbaces, governor of the Medes, having, with great difficulty and after much solicitation, obtained admission to visit him, found him, among crowds of concubines, and in the dress of a woman, spinning purple wool with a distaff, and * Concerning the real builder of Babylon, see Strab. xvi. init. ; Diod. Sie. ii. 17; Q. Curt. v. 1, 42; Euseb. Chron. init.; Jerome on ‘Hos. c. xi.; Herod. i. 184.; Amm. Marcell. xxii. 20.— Lemaire. + Arene vice.] Understand sand mixed with lime.—Berneccerus. But the signification of arena is not always confined to that of sand ; it sometimes means carth or mud. Thus Virgil, Georg. i. 105, has malé pinguis arene ; and, speaking of the Nile, says, Viridem gyptwm nigrdé fecundat arend. Diibner’s edition has arenati vice, 1 know not on what authority. + Nemo.] Justin has forgotten the expeditions of Hercules and Bacchus.—Lemaire.- : ' 6 JUSTIN. [B.L. CH.IV. distributing tasks to girls, but surpassing all the women in the effeminacy of his person and the wantonness of his looks. At that sight, feeling indignant that so many men should be subject to one so much of a woman, and that those who bore swords and arms should obey one that handled wool, he pro- ceeded to his companions, and told them what he had seen, protesting that he could not submit to a prince who had rather be a woman thanaman.